WOW Word-Of-the-Week #515: Pleasure

June 18, 2014 by · Comments Off on WOW Word-Of-the-Week #515: Pleasure 

Pleasure the excitement or happiness produced by the expectation or enjoyment of something good.

Do you find pleasure in your everyday life? Do you find enjoyment in your job? Have you identified the things that you are passionate about? Do you have the freedom to pursue them?

This is the final WOW by Jonathan Clements Wall Street Journal Sunday article titled, “Some Life Advice for the Class of 2014.” His son Henry graduated from Washington University and he had 7 good points of “parental wisdom” to give him. Today I will share the last two.

  1. Money buys a lot of happiness initially – but, after that, not so much. If you can lift folks out of poverty, you can vastly improve their happiness. But from there, it seems to take a lot of money to make people measurably happy.
  1. The reason to accumulate money is so you don’t have to worry about money. It’s sort of like health. It’s only when you’re sick that you realize how great it is to feel healthy.

Similarly, it’s only when you don’t have enough money that you realize how great it is to be on a solid financial footing. More money may not make you happy – but not having money could make you extremely unhappy. You want to get to the point where money isn’t something you worry about.

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 How do we pull together these seven threads? The career that makes you happy today may not make you happy in 20 years. Instead, you may want to do something totally different. That something might be important, but it may not be lucrative.

My advice: Spend your first few decades in the workforce getting yourself in great financial shape so you have the freedom to pursue whatever career you want.

That means saving like crazy. And, no, you won’t be missing out on much. All those possessions you want will give you so little pleasure. Instead, what will give you pleasure is striving after the things you’re passionate about. I would encourage you to manage your financial life so you can do just that.

This week focus on what brings you pleasure. If you are just starting out what plan do you have in place to get yourself in financial shape? If you are in the midpoint of your life is there another career that you want to pursue? Are you striving for those things that you are passionate about and bring you pleasure?

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